The Ticking Peaks
"We whisper of it, but most folks never been. Too far, too dangerous, aye. Only reason we know about it is the yearly tick waking us up at night and the monk's coming down to trade for fish. Loonies, the lot of them. Who'd live in a clock?" Description "The Beyond's parasitic tendencies don't end at people, sometimes it steals time." The enigmatic mountain range of ticking brass is a taboo topic in the The City of the Lost. People don't like thinking about the yearly chime so loud that it reaches even their distant city, nor the strange monks in shimmering, softly ticking robes that accompany the chime. Few have managed to make it there and back again, but what few accounts are available have allowed the cryptic words of visiting Timekeepers to be deciphered. It is a land of brass piping and clockwork, moving cogs and ventilation geysers so unnatural as to have been ripped from another world entirely. It is most assuredly real, unfortunately. The cursed visitors it has had can attest to that. They babble ceaselessly of the horrifying clockwork monsters that tick tick tick across its foothills to perform their indecipherable tasks, the mummified corpses of past visitors aimlessly wandering like servants themselves, and even more abominable things whose very suggestion reduces hardened explorers to babbling messes of regret and insanity. The Ticking Peaks do not forgive intrusion, yet something draws wanderers to it regardless. Some urge. Curiosity? What is there here to discover? Only brass, death, and the callous ticking of clocks. Geography "Tick." The Ticking Peaks are a stretch of mountains wholly different from the surrounding landscape. The striking distinction of its brass, pipe-laden ground suddenly being cut off by relatively mundane boulder, dirt, and foliage is ever-present in the accounts of returning explorers. It is an unnatural place - birds fly around it, beasts refuse to step foot within its bounds, and people that die here are ravaged only by the accelerated passage of time, untouched by other natural forces. Countless pipes tunnel across and through the winding brass cliffs, entering mountainous clock towers and winding through them, each larger clockwork leading up like stairs to the single largest monolith of time's passing in the entire area, where once a year its chime echoes across the Beyond. The clocktowers frame the Ticking Peaks like a wall, watching all who enter and all that goes on in the valleys and cliffs within. There are pools of mercury where small clockwork creatures gather, performing inscrutable tasks, and caves that lead beneath the Ticking Peaks or inside its mountains and towers. As one might expect, the tales report that any who enter are never seen again. History Its difficult to tell the history of the Ticking Peaks due to its distance and danger, though the City of the Lost heard the first annual chime ten years ago. This was soon followed by the first caravan of the monks calling themselves the Timekeepers, who traded magical scrolls and other items for massive quantities of dried fish and other mundane goods. No doubt the history of the Ticking Peaks will become more clear and relevant as adventurers uncover its secrets and overcome its challenges. Inhabitants Clockwork monsters, ravenous undead, opportunistic orcs, and otherwordly horrors are all just a few of the most evident inhabitants within the Ticking Peaks. That isn't a particularly large surprise, given that this is the Beyond, but not every faction is entirely hostile. One, specifically, is the rarest thing of all - tolerable. The Timekeepers A collection of elves who apparently live within the largest clocktower in the Ticking Peaks, seeking something within its depths. They have somehow been able to spare themselves from the worst of the Ticking Peak's leeching aura. They are a mysterious group, but they make a journey to the City of the Lost yearly to trade, and this is always welcomed despite their odd mannerisms due to the scrolls and items they bring. Points of Interest Time's Temple This titanic edifice of entropy is the tallest point within the Ticking Peaks, and around it are some of the most dangerous constructs - they are drawn to it for some reason. It is also the home of the Timekeepers, who are able to pass unharmed in and out of its halls. Strange Properties "Time is a fickle thing. There, it grows malicious." Within the borders of the Ticking Peaks time works strangely - it is hastened, passing at an abnormal and often dangerous rate, aging whatever enters its borders. This effect is ill-understood at the moment, the only evidence of it being the new grey hairs and wrinkles found on the explorers who returned. The rust on their tools, and the fogginess of their minds.